ANAHEIM, CA – (May 22, 2013) The City of Anaheim is informing its residents, businesses and visitors of the potential for additional traffic in The Anaheim Resort beginning Thursday evening through Saturday morning, and is encouraging anyone traveling through that area to plan accordingly. Disneyland Resort’s Monstrous Summer! All-Nighter special event begins Friday, May 24 at 6 a.m., for a continuous 24 hours. Continue reading →

About five years ago when he was the Mayor of Anaheim, Curt Pringle dreamed of a regional transportation center for his city — a place they named ARTIC which would be the Orange County station for the equally dreamy California High-Speed Rail system which would be zipping through town on its way to San Diego, or charging northward to LA’s Union Station (over, under or through some of the densest urban residential housing in California) and onto San Francisco and Sacramento.

The Mayor-for-hire, as he was known at Friends for Fullerton Future, or Master of the Universe as he was tagged last year at the union-funded Voice of OC, didn’t stop with just a $184 million train station that would partly be paid for by OCTA’s Measure M where Board Member Pringle sat for years. From concocted ridership projections, he fantasized that Disney patrons would be coming to ARTIC by the millions, but still needed to be transported to the Mouse’s cash registers Main Gate, miles away from the bullet train, and on the wrong side of the 5 Freeway. Since Walt Disney already had a world-famous one, Pringle announced in 2007 that he needed a MONORAIL for the Disney visitors. From his January State-of-the-City speech: Continue reading →

“During questioning by Orange County Transportation Authority directors Thursday morning, Anaheim City Councilwoman Kris Murray acknowledged what insiders have been saying for months about the city’s planned streetcar project: A major reason for the transit line is to allow expansion of the Disneyland Resort,” according to the Voice of OC.

West Katella Avenue and West Ball Road Ball, which border the park, are “beyond capacity,” Murray said. “If we’re ever going to see a third gate at Disneyland,” she said, “we need to get cars off the road.” Continue reading →

The Anaheim Resort’s millions of guests drive our local economy, but those visitors also create significant traffic congestion. Over the objections of Mayor Tom Tait, the Anaheim City Council approved a $318,000,000.00 publicly-funded streetcar system to transport Resort visitors and employees. Although Disney uses buses almost exclusively at their Florida property, and the price tag of $53,000,000.00 made buses comparatively more affordable, enhanced bus service was astonishingly dismissed as undesirable-read “not sexy enough.”

Streetcars are more expensive to purchase and operate than buses. Their fixed track and power systems are costly and disruptive to existing traffic, and especially problematic for pedestrians. Buses offer greater flexibility, enabling the addition of vehicles for peak hours-critical to address the unique traffic patterns of Anaheim, with crunch time not driven by conventional issues like rush hour so much as variable influences like closing time at Disneyland, last innings at the Stadium, or events at the Honda Center. Buses are easily removed or replaced for service, while a disabled streetcar renders the system unusable, and leaving traffic clogged around a stalled streetcar.